Smriti Dalvi, founder of Florista, an online flower and gifting boutique shares her thoughts on entrepreneurship today.
Welcome to SHEROES Smriti, can you tell us a little about yourself?
I was born into a traditional south Indian family, having strong family values and bonding. I remember being everyone's favourite! I studied Electrical Engineering as that was one of the most sought after paths along with medicine then. Post that, tech and software was on the upswing so I did an extensive course on Software Programming and Applications, excelled in it, loved it and was happy to have a career path in Technology.
From Education to Development, I worked with a couple of software companies and enjoyed travelling in India and few other countries to meet different organizations for Business Analysis and developing software solutions. Eventually life had different plans and the entrepreneurial calling happened, and Florista became my life’s purpose.
I met my husband Sameer in Engineering college, we were best buddies throughout and eventually ended up getting married. We've been married for 21 yrs and still refer to each other as ‘buddy’.
We have 2 lovely children, my Son Brij is 19 and my daughter Teesta is 15. Both my children are quite tuned to the Florista journey as I had very early on started sharing details of the business, its challenges, its successes with them. It helped them understand why we keep long hours away from home and also gives them a sense of belonging. It used to amaze me how they would also try and bring in their thoughts and views in their own sweet way whenever I would discuss a challenge with them.
How and when did the idea of Florista come about and how has the entrepreneurial journey been?
Life was pretty much smooth with both Sameer running a successful creative and marketing agency and I working as a COO for a software company. And it was one evening in a coffee shop that we realized we wanted to do something different in our lives, and start something new, exciting and challenging. We thought over several businesses which were fragmented and not organized and unanimously narrowed on the flower industry. We knew that with our experience in the corporate sector, technology background and Sameer’s creative and marketing background, we could add value by organizing and standardizing this space. And that’s how the entrepreneurial journey began...
What were your initial challenges when starting up?
Initially, I did not quit my job and jumped into running the business. We operated mainly out of a small space in Sameer’s Advertising office, and started the first retail store in 2004 in one of the finest malls in South Mumbai which was also close to a commercial hub. With the location being so strategic, visibility was great, and gave a fantastic start to the business.
Challenge was to keep pace with the rapid demand that came by, space, manpower, tech everything became a huge constraint and we had to think and re strategise fast as we were losing not only money, we were also losing pace. Therefore it was either Sameer or me , that needed to revive this beautiful business that we started. So I decided to quit my software career in 2007 and devote my fulltime to Florista.
What is the core product / service offering of your venture?
The core product remains delivery of fresh and exotic cut flowers and associated gifts such cake, chocolates, wine, fruits to over 200 cities and globally through our partners. We are known for being extremely professional in the industry and today are the preferred floral vendors for large corporate clients.
How did you manage funding for the base operations initially?
We used personal resources, friends and family also helped us.
Some hard lessons you have learnt on the way that you would like to share with us?
Being a woman entrepreneur in a terribly unorganized and male dominated industry from farmers to floral artsits to wholesalers, it has posed its obvious challenges, but am happy to overcome these and emerged successful.
Also realized that it’s important to keep a watchful eye on compliances, applicable taxes really early on. We did go through our share of hiccups to streamline the same.
What is a typical day at work like for you?
I do not stick to a particular routine, and 3 days a week (not fixed), I reach office really early at 8:30 am.
My day starts with reading daily online news on the industry, e-commerce and retail mainly. I do a routine check of the mails received by our call center, quality check on responses to customer queries by our team members. I do check on order cancellations and the reasons. Then run analytics on the web portal to check the customer engagement levels, spend an hour with the marketing team on the progress of the preplanned activities, check proposals, quotations, spend time with the accounts team on payables and receivables, and other necessary provisions. Discussion with workshop, design and training team on new requests, progress of planned new products. Reading through the proposals that we receive for various collaboration and associations from other gifting vendors, partners.